Saturday, August 22, 2009

What is a software called msconfig utility?

MSCONFIG utility is the short form of Microsoft System Configuration Utility and is meant for advanced users. This utility has tabs related to the boot option, the way system boots, the services which are running and the startup programs which automatically start during the windows startup.

Most of the users need to look only for the services and startup tab as these give us an idea as to why the system is becoming slow and where the system resources are utilized. Although other tabs are equally important it is recommended to leave the default settings intact and not to make any changes unless you have a thorough knowledge of the consequences.

So lets look at what the services tab can do for us. This tab when clicked gives four partitions. They are: Service, Essential, Manufacturer, Status. These show us exactly what they say. For example: if you do not have a printer installed on the current machine, print spooler service can be stopped. Most of the services cannot be directly related to any program which we can control. It is better to go for services.msc to get a complete description of these services. For this go to Start> Run> type services.msc and press enter. By highlighting the service you get its description and by double clicking it you can change its current status as well as how it starts the next time system starts.

Now let us look at the important and the easiest part of MSCONFIG utility. Clicking on the startup tab leads us to the programs which automatically start during the system startup. Most of the programs are not required during startup. The only important ones are firewall andantivirus. Most of the software which we install try to start automatically every time system starts. For example: Nero(a CD burning software) tries to start every time the system starts to check for updates. Now this program is not needed as we do not burn a cd every time we start a pc. So this startup entry can be disabled. We are not disabling the program altogether, but just making it not to start during startup and exploit system resources. It can always be started from usual locations like desktop or programs.

After making the changes click apply and close the utility. It will ask for a restart. If you want to see the changes click restart or you can restart later if you are still working on your pc.